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How the SEC Got Rich

By Mark

The Birmingham News has done an enormous favor for all college football fans who are interested in just how college football arrived in the sorry state in which it finds itself. In a series of articles on the history of the SEC in commemoration of the conference's 75th anniversary, the paper attempts to explain how the SEC and its counterparts among the Big Six conferences have become the financial powerhouses we know today. The News documents not only the history well but the current state of the sport, together with linking to a database of conference financial information with team by team payouts from 2006.

The history may be familiar to many, but it is useful to review and to realize once again the vast sums that swirl around college athletics, and football in particular. No longer is this mere sport, or a sideline enhancing education. It is big business first and foremost, with budgets often swamping those of many academic departments. The pressures placed on athletic directors to produce revenue is immense and trickles down to coaches with their multi-million dollar contracts. It is the constant need for revenue that feeds the pressure to cut corners in recruiting or in academics to keep kids eligible that shouldn't be or to take kids that don't belong in college or in your institution.

The SEC isn't the only conference that is guilty of infractions like these but it is worse than most. At one point in the last couple of years, every member of the conference but Vanderbilt was on probation, a statistic I don't think any other conference can come close to matching. It is a conference that traditionally has had a fan base that doesn't care how you win, just so long as you do win. They also don't seem to care who you beat - witness the league's traditionally weak non-conference football schedule. There is a historical conference culture that accepts NCAA violations and weak academic standards. There has been some movement of late to correct that perception, but the SEC still has a long way to go.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on March 01, 2008 (boomark / email).